Alexandre Desplat is 51 years old and has composed some 130 movie scores. He's been nominated four times. This year they include three of the 104 eligible Oscar features: "Argo," "Rise of the Guardians," and "Zero Dark Thirty." His score for "Moonrise Kingdom" and "Rust and Bone" didn't get through the Academy's strict eligibility requirements (see below.) Here's TOH's interview.

Thompson on Hollywood

Born and raised in Manhattan, Anne Thompson grew up going to the Thalia and The New Yorker and wound up at grad Cinema Studies at NYU. She worked at United Artists and Film Comment before heading west as that magazine's west coast editor. She wrote for the LA Weekly, Sight and Sound, Empire, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly before serving as West Coast Editor of Premiere. She wrote for The Washington Post, The London Observer, Wired, More, and Vanity Fair, and did staff stints at The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. She eventually took her blog Thompson on Hollywood to Indiewire. She taught film criticism at USC Critical Studies, and continues to host the fall semester of “Sneak Previews” for UCLA Extension.